Auckland Evening

First impressions of Auckland: clean, amazing light, view of the water everywhere.

I arrived on Monday evening and once I’d found my hotel set off down Queen St, the main artery of Auckland’s CBD. Over Queen St itself, we’ll draw a veil – picturesque it isn’t, nor very interesting. But Queen St leads to the harbour and that is picturesque – full of ships of every size and shape, from naval vessels through container ships to little sailboats.

The Hilton in Auckland is perched on a pier and looks like a cruise ship.

I decided it ought to have a bar with a good view, and indeed it had. The bar was called Bellini and thanks to the power of suggestion I ordered a classic peach bellini. I sipped it and watched containers being lowered into a ship. It must be the five year old boy in me, but I love this: something about the bright colours of the containers and the simple puzzle of slotting them all into the ship.

Avion, Avion

My Adorable Nephew knows where his Mamó lives ('Dublin') and where Yiayia lives ('Serres'). When asked where Auntie Nehneh lives, the cherub replied, 'avion.' And, you know, there's some truth to that - I have been spending a lot of time on avions since Gregory has known me.

Recently I've taken to counting the number of avions between me and HOME. There are eight in all for a total distance of 29772km - and today I ticked the first leg off the list: Melbourne to Auckland.

[I was planning to introduce a new 'airport review' feature to the blog, but failed to do the necessary legwork this morning because I spent all my time in Melbourne Airport queuing. First for an hour and a quarter to check in, then for security (the man ahead of me had locked his laptop in his rucksack and lost the key...), then for immigration, then to board.]

All that queuing makes a girl sleepy so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for my first impressions of New Zealand.

Oh vwah!*

xxx HTLT

*tm Gregory Killian

Today...

It rained, I packed. The highlight of the day was going to drop off some things at the Salvos'.

A Lady Traveller's life can't be glamorous every day.

I console myself with holiday porn - pictures of some of the places I'll be visiting on my Pacific travels, like Lake Wanaka:

(image via telegraph.co.uk)

Sigh.

Pretty Williamstown

Packing for NZ/Canada/Home has commenced. Despair is likely to follow soon. I'm avoiding the issue by looking at pictures of Williamstown. It's a pretty seaside village/suburb of Melbourne where I went a few weeks ago to take the saltwater cure for my toes.

Pretty pier where you can buy seafood off the boats,

pretty boats,

more pretty boats (if you squint you can just see the skyscrapers of the CBD in the background),

pretty old people on the beach, cackling in Greek (+ birds cackling in bird):

and my absolutely, positively non-pretty feet - trust me that it's better that you see them covered in foam.

Onwards & Eastwards

It's ironic really. This is, to all intents and purposes, a travel blog - but most often, the thing that gets in the way of blogging is travel. Yesterday, for example, I was in Brisbane for work and didn't get back to Melbourne until late. (I suppose another way of looking at it is that work quite often interferes with blogging ...)

It has occurred to me that I should overhaul my phone and get one of them there smartphones so I can blog on the road. I promise I'm going to look into this when I'm at home for Christmas.

Speaking of which - this post was really intending to be about my travel plans for the next few weeks. I've been in Australia for 4 1/2 months - the longest I've gone without crossing a national border since ... well, I don't know. (I've said it before but I think it bears repeating - it's not until you get to Australia that you realise quite how far it is from everywhere else.) That will all change on Monday when I go to Auckland. Yay! New Zealand! New country!

I'm spending two weeks in New Zealand and then I am flying from Auckland to LA to Toronto (to see LTBB and his lovely wife), back to LA and then on to London and then, finally, home to Dublin in time for Christmas. Lady Traveller is on the move!

Shades of Grey

Where were we? There was rain, there were clouds, we watched the rain, we stared at the clouds ... and then on the third day the sun rose again and there was light. Grey light, strained through stormclouds, but light all the same.

We trekked to the beach and, while Stu surfed, Sunny licked sea water from her fingers, Georgie chased Sunny and I took photos.

And although the scene may have been far removed from the conventional Australian stereotype of blue skies and white sand, it was still beautiful.

Hard to see where the sky started and the sea stopped.

Great Ocean [Road] Rain

People rhapsodise about the Great Ocean Road. It's one of Australia's Must-Sees. But not necessarily when seen through a veil of rain ....

Yes, sadly the weekend I spent with Georgie and Stu and Sunday in Anglesea was the weekend when Victoria decided to remind me of seaside holidays spent in Donegal. Watching the rain. Rushing outside when there was a break in the rain - only for it to start raining again.

Deciding the rain had to stop sometime, we went for a drive and I took photos. Of the Hawaiian dancer in the rain.

And the rain out of the passenger window.

Eventually we did the only sensible thing and sought refuge indoors. We went to Wye River General Store - an upgraded local shop with a very nice cafe (though on the pricy side) and a fire.

(Georgie checking out the offerings.)

I chose a lemon tart. I chose wisely. It was was delectable.

Sunny recommends the chocolate milkshake.

Coffee drunk, cakes eaten, we went back outside to watch the rain some more.